ABSTRACT
The radical suffragists are an extraordinary group of women who ran a grass-roots campaign for the vote in the Lancashire cotton towns at the turn of the century. The radical suffragists sprang from an industrial culture which enabled them to organise a widespread political campaign for Working women like themselves. Since 1867, when John Stuart Mill introduced his women's suffrage amendment to the Second Reform bill, regional suffrage societies had grown up in all the large towns — including Manchester. The radical suffragists realised that in order to make their campaigns effective, they would have to organise themselves into a distinct and identifiable pressure group. Indeed, the radical suffragists were isolated from the Labour Party for seven important years, from 1905 to 1912. During that time the party, due to an odd but effective anti-feminist alliance between Marxist-socialists and conservative trade unionists, rejected women's suffrage motions time and time again, in favour of all-or-nothing adult suffrage resolutions.
